Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1887-07-23
MARVELLOUS INCONSISTENCY

The San Francisco Examiner recently
published directory to 1913 lottery
agencies in that city conducted by Chinese
At a later date its reporters found no
difficulty whatever in entering thirteen of
these policy shops and buying tickets.
They found the agencies crowded with
whites and Chinese gambling at the lot
teries, of which there are two daily draw
ings. In some places young women were
found under pretense of buying articles at
a fancy counter, secretly purchasing lot
terry tickets.
OF course the Examiner scores the police
for not closing up these places, and its
commentaries upon the subject are forci-
bic, since if the lotteries are run so
openly there can be 10 difficulty whatever
in obtaining the evidence necessary to con-
viction. In other California cities very
much the same state of affairs exist, and
Chinese lotteries are daily drawn without
any apparent fear on the part of their con-
ductors of any interruption.
But these illegal concerns, which ought
to be suppressed, and can be crushed out
if the authori les will it, handle but a
comparatively sum of money, and the coin
OF the dupes at least remains in the State
for a time. The tickets sell for dime as
against dollars for other lottery certificates,
and the aggregate of their sales for a quar-
ter does not equal the outgo from Califor-
MIA for single month to the lottery swim
die engineered by the man in Louisiana,
who enjoys the unenviable distinction of
having fred the first shot that ushered in
the greatest rebellion of the worlds his
tory.
While the newspapers are 50 energetic
in exposing the Chinese lottery business,
they seem to be oblivious to the fact that
syndicate of white men in San Francisco
in defiance of the law, conduct lottery
monthly, based upon the drawings of the
foreign lottery. Their allurement is also
small price for tickets, one-quarter that
charged by the Southern swindle, and
prizes are promised in proportion. No
names are attached to the public announce
ments of the concern. Those who gamble
in it must trust to the good faith (?) of the
secret conductors of the thieving institu-
ton, and commit their money to whom
they know not, and trust for their prizes
to an unknown source. The only inform
alton afforded them on the subject is that
communications through Wells, Fargo &
Co.'S express will reach these policy
dealers.
Coutemporaneous with the indignation
of the E1eminer that the Chinese should
be permitted to run lotteries in California
in defiance of the law, it and its contem-
poraries regularly advertise an American
concern, and encourage a spirit of lottery
gambling that is demoralizing thousands
of youths, men, girls and women in this
State. With one breath the San Francisco
press exclaims against the Chinese lottery,
ana with the next does all 1T can to aid
the New Orleans concern to corrupt the
people. Yet both classes of lotteries are
prohibited by the law.
1t is no more criminal for Chinaman
to operate lottery, sell tickets and draw
schemes, than for the Examiner and its
neighbors to advertise lotteries. The
philosophy that justifes a newspaper in
condemning the lottery of one man and
invoking the penalties of the law upon
him, yet prompts it to engage in the
" booming" of the lottery of another with
somewhat paler skin, is of a kind that
passes ordinary comprehension.
The only consistency manifest in the
matter, is that of the authorities, who
shut their eyes impartially to the acts of
both sets of criminals.